Here’s the Wikipedia page on dental tourism. You can get it done for a lot cheaper. Looks like about $300 for Mexico. That page says $60 for a root canal in Hungary–that really does not sound right to me, considering I paid about that much for a filling when I was there, but I could be wrong. At any rate, Hungary was a popular destination for Austrians, Germans, and even Brits to get their teeth worked on. (Now looking at various Hungarian websites, it seems like anywhere from about $75-$300 for a root canal and another $150 for the crown is about average. Shit. Should’ve gone there for my teeth work and at least enjoyed the vacation!)
That’s just the root canal. I was talking about the root canal plus putting in a crown. The combined cost in Mexico would be about $600. Still cheaper than Panama, but not by that much. (I forget exactly how much mine was; I think it ended up being between $800 and $900 for both together.)
I agree that all of the prices for services that we’re discussing are determined ultimately by market forces. Ultimately everyone that contributes to dental services are producing goods and services at prices that they deem competitive and reasonable. Other posters have pointed to factors that less directly drive up the costs of dental care, like the relatively small number of dentists and thus the lack of competition. Greater competition would drive down costs, as everyone in the system would have to figure out ways to trim out unnecessary costs to remain competitive. Or perhaps a more radical change in the whole dental system is what’s really necessary to bring down costs – something like taxpayer funded government dental care. Or on the other end of the spectrum, perhaps a more aggressive capitalist model if the likes of Walmart started opening up dental clinics with greater efficiencies and more care provided by lower-paid dental hygienists and assistants.
However, the reason that I brought up costs is that the OP wants to blame particular dentists for “ripping him off”. Those dentists are essentially small business owners, and they determine the price of a given procedure by looking at their overall costs and figuring what they need to charge to keep the practice running smoothly. Part of those costs does, admittedly, include a fairly generous salary for the dentist. But if you look at the costs (thanks dracoi for that example), you see that the dentist’s salary isn’t a huge factor in the price of dental care. If the dentist decided to pay herself half as much, the price of a given procedure would only drop by 10%. FORD2 would be paying $1260 for a root canal, instead of $1400.
And, partly, society has agreed that professionals that spend a decade educating themselves, all the while living a very frugal life and accumulating huge debts, ultimately deserve generous compensation. Perhaps you think it’s too generous, but I do not.
It’s the system as a whole that makes dental care so expensive. There are lots of (mostly) reasonable individual people acting to extract moderate profits at many levels, and a definite lack of competition among dental providers. But your dentist is not some cackling villain trying to hold your teeth for ransom.
A while ago I was discussing with my dentist what grotesque ripoff merchants he and his ilk are. He thought I was being very unfair. “Compare us to doctors,” he said, “We only have one pair of hands and can only do one patient at a time. And the work is painstakingly accurate. You can’t rush anything. No dentist can do dozens of patients every day, but every doctor can.”
Not sure I’d be brave enough to do that!! Presume he didn’t have anything sharp in the vicinity of your teeth when you made those remarks? :eek:
When I got mine done, the three visits were:
- Initial consultation, where he examined my tooth and gave me the options. At that point I choose to schedule the root canal. I could have chosen not to.
- Initial root canal. Filled canal with medication and put on temporary seal.
- Follow-up one week later to see if there was any infection, remove the medication, put in the final root canal filling, then put on a temporary filling on top of that.
This doesn’t seem too excessive to me. And it seems a bit silly to think they care giving me an unneeded 30-45 minute appointment and an extra temporary filling just to make me feel better about paying the bill.
Just in case you didn’t get it, the remainder is profit or retained earnings. In truth, a lot of it was for lease payments (since payment on the principal is not reflected in either interest or directly in depreciation). Some of it is definitely kept in the checking account to cover expenses as they come up - especially important when insurance companies might not pay you for a couple of months.
On the other end, Andy Hallet, who played Lorne in the television series Angel, died because of an infection(or complications from one) that started with a dental procedure. I’m assuming he had enough money to pay for a decent dentist.
Weird,
I had one done back in June for $675.
However i had 6 fillings at the same time, maybe he gave me a bulk discount?